The worst spots first

Cheryl Wade

Published 9:00 pm, Monday, August 19, 2002

Daily News/NINA GREIPEL

Cleaning technicians Jessica Rounds, left and Brandy Garcia both from Bay City use a blacklight lamp to check for contamination by blood or urine after a man had died in that room. Rounds and Garcia work for Timbertown Cleaning & Restoration Contractors, Inc. in Saginaw. They say they enjoy their job, "it makes me feel good, doing a job that helps people," says Rounds.

Sometimes, the stench of death invades even the gas mask Dave Dietz wears to shield him from the cruel evidence of a murder or suicide.

Driving to a house with who knows what inside, Dietz shields his mind, too. This strange, difficult job of his is a kind, helpful service for those left behind, he tells himself. It's also a crime scene, even if it's a suicide. His truck bears those two words, "crime scene," in red and white letters.

Dietz is the biocleaning project estimator for Timbertown Cleaning and Restoration Contractors of Saginaw. He and his three-person crew recently have been certified as biotechnicians, people who clean the premises where a crime or trauma has taken place. Covered from head to toe in full-body suits complete with hoods  plus throw-away shoe covers and three pairs of gloves  the crew handles human or animal remains that have become hazardous materials.

Federal requirements mean workers must treat everything "as if it's the worst it can be, AIDS and hepatitis," said Don M. McNulty. He is owner and founder of Biocleaning Services of America based near Kansas City, Mo. He developed the biocleaning training and certification Dietz and his crew completed.

"It isn't something that you just walk in and do," said Dietz, who might be the first person to see a scene after family members and authorities. The objective is to clean away every trace of death.

"Everything is looked at at least two or three times. It's like a detective going in and looking for something."

Often, the first step is to place an ozone machine  about the size of a small cabinet  in the house to break down the molecules that cause odor. The crew sets up a "safe zone" in a hallway or a room away from where the body was found. There, workers remove contaminated clothes or materials and place them in bins especially for hazardous waste. Dietz is required to keep careful records of the disposal process.

The crew goes to the worst spots first, said crew chief Kim Rachuba. On hands and knees, with rags and chemicals, the crew cleans everything by hand.

McNulty started his business in the early 1990s after receiving phone calls from people who'd looked far and wide for a company that would do this type of work.

He's seen the quirky, the lonely, the sad scenes. One afternoon in 1997, while cleaning the apartment of a reclusive woman who apparently hadn't thrown anything away for years before her death, he found $187,000 worth of uncashed stock dividend checks dating to 1993. The woman had accumulated huge quantities of clothes, artwork, knickknacks and mail-order catalogs. In some places, trash was piled so high McNulty had to crouch down to avoid hitting his head on the 10-foot-high ceilings.

"It took me two days to find the death scene because there was so much trash," he said. "It took me 2 1/2 weeks to empty the apartment."

Biocleaners' work isn't cheap. The average cost, which often is paid by insurance companies, is $2,200 to $2,500, McNulty said. The money pays the physical toll the crime causes, but the psychological toll of so many gruesome sights is another thing entirely.

"What you need is the inner strength and the outer strength," Rachuba said. "I just try and block it out. We're there for a job."

The effects of exposure to gory scenes can cause biocleaning workers to have a condition known as critical incident stress syndrome, McNulty said. They have flashbacks, "stress dreams," then wake up in cold sweat.

"You have weird, inexplicable dreams that usually include blood, death  that type of thing," he said. "You can have a normal dream and have it twisted with blood in it."

McNulty said he tries to check those effects by having a debriefing with his wife.

"I've trained my wife," he said. "We talk about it."

After Dietz is done with his work, he consoles himself by thinking about the people who are close to him and very much alive.

"I think of all my grandkids," he said. "They come over and I look at them, and I think, 'Hey, this is what life's all about.'"

Daily News/NINA GREIPEL

Garcia and Rounds fill their cleaning buckets with chemical cleaning agents ready to remove blood and anything else that is contaminated.